Blog of Cameron

This week we finally got to address the elephant that’s been in just about every room, artifical intelligence. It is the new kid on the block and it has been making it’s presence known.

The big thing that everyone is worried about right now is AI being used for cheating. After discussing this topic as a class, I’m honetly a little more worried now. AI detectors were brought up and it seems they are practicly useless.

ChatGPT (and other AI) raise several other issues as well. There is the risk that artists face to their craft, the massive energy cost, the degredation of privacy laws, biased information, and the fact that AI regularly makes stuff up among many other issues. And yet it is still becoming more and more popular. This is due to the convenience that it offers in dealing with mundane tasks. There are teachers that use it to help write lesson plans or practice problems for students. Students might use it to check grammar or summarize something. While I am not against using AI after I already know the skill, it is concerning to see people jump right to AI without first learning.

We were given a few pieces of advice going forward, the three that stuck best with me were:
Demystify AI: It is important for our students to understand this new technology that will affect their lives, and not to just view it as a magic box
Focus on the Learning Process: Education is already moving away from just focussing on the end result, and taking a more holistic view of the journey. If this is the focus of your class, then AI won’t be as harmful
Celebrate Humanness: Cultivate skills that AI cannot do. This one is honestly pretty hard, as it is difficult to know what AI will be capable of in the future. How many complex processess can be broken down into a really long series of yes or no questions? We used to think the Turing Test would mark when an AI would become sentient, but with large language models that idea has gone out the window.

This week we talked abit about the importance of properly curating and organizing our collected resources. After that we broke into a a type of user generated conference (or unconference) that we called EdCamp. Sadly there were no marshmellows to roast, apparently stating campfires in the classroom is some sort of “safety hazard.”

On the topic of digital curation we discussed the importance of always having access to the source file. It is painful to know exactly what you want but be unable to find it anymore. It is also important to consider how you store your files, are you using an organized system that makes everything searchable. Another consideration is cloud storage, if a laptop gets stolen or damaged, you don’t want to lose all your data along with it.

After that discussion we moved on to EdCamp. It was certainly a fun and interesting way to do group discussions. There was no prechosen topic for us, instead everyone could propose a topic by writing in down and taping it to the wall. Then everyone got three votes in the form of stickers that they could distribute however they saw fit. The top ideas are the ones that groups formed around, and the idea was that at any time you could get up and swap to another group.

The group I ended up with discussed at length why student presentations are bad and how to help improve them. The process as a whole was very fun, from the voting to the discussions. One issue that I noticed however, was that there was very little switching of groups. I think this was due to some questions being a little to constrained, such as the group I was apart of. It was difficult for new people to join our group when we were already pretty far into a list of solutions. All in all, it was a great experience, and definitely something I want to try out again in the future. Though next time, a good camp needs marshmellows.

In this class we talked a lot about how multimedia can support us in the classroom. This is because people learn more deeply from seeing words and pictures together, rather than just words alone.

We started by discussing how various types of videos can be used in teaching. In my own experience I can recall Bill Nye videos in my early schooling, Khan academy lessons that saved me throughout university, and fun Kurzgesagt videos that I watch all the time. These and more have all helped me a lot in my own learning and continue to do so today. Videos are so awesome because they can show more than a person can tell. I can talk a lot about what atomic orbitals look like and I can even show static images that are great representations of them, or I can show this video by minutephysics on YouTube.

This particular video utilizes computer simulations that you could never come close to replicating by drawing on a white board. It is also something that students can rewatch on their own, replaying over the bits that interest them the most. Other useful video applications include time lapses to show events that happen slowly or using VR to do a tour of someplace you can’t take students.

There is still still a lot to be said for the role of still images in education. An image like this is a fantastic depiction of atomic orbitals and can can be refered back to quickly by students.

We also discuseed PowerPoint briefly. It is a fantastic tool for making my own graphics. You can do a lot with the ability to remove backgrounds, and adding text to images. I remember using PowerPoint extensively while working on my undergrad thesis.

Jeff Hopkins talked to us about his thoughts and his actions regarding changing how learning is done in a drastic manner. Jeff left the public school system and started his own school called the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (or PSII) in Victoria. This school bases it’s approach to teaching on Vogotsky’d theory about the Zone of Proximal Developement, the area just outside the learners comfort zone. If learners are not in the zone of proximal developement, then they will become disengaged, and potentially act out. Jeff believes that it is maintaining this zone of proximal developement that public schools tend to struggle with the most. It is very difficult to do with so many students and so little resources.

To maintain student interest, the course need to be built up around the individual learner with them in the centre. To do this, PSII uses an inquiry model to learning and assessment. In this model, all the coursework is built around questions that the learner creates and wishes to pursue.

The general inquiry process starts with students generating a question, and then researching it. That research is used to create newer and deeper questions that will eventually lead to the completion of a project. Throughout this process, the teachers work alongside the student to point them in areas where they will learn the required material to meet the curriculum.

All in all, this method seems impressive, although I remain skeptical. I struggle to see how students following only one inquiry can lead them to all the areas that they need to learn. However, I have to admit the results that the students are achieving seems impressive.

This week we talked a lot about how to plan our lessons with the expectation that students will be curious. We need to plan for our students curiosity, not just hope for it. It is important to know how curious our students are, as it has been shown that higher curiosity is correlated with higher achievement and attendance. While curiosity is difficult to measure, you can try simply asking students to rate their curiosity of the classroom on a scale of 1-10 and use that as a starting point. It is also important to remember that we are constantly modelling behaviour for our students so we should be aware of how we model curiosity.

When we plan for curiosity, we can shape our assessment around it. This allows us to use the inquiry model of assessment.

This let’s students learn about the things they are passionate about instead of just going throught the same programming as everyone. This allows the curriculum to be more individualized and thus more engaging for the students. We as educators need to find ways to assess the students on the topics they choose.